VSCO FILM // BEFORE AND AFTERS, WORKFLOW, ETC.

by NATE + JACLYN

thirteen years ago i fumbled my first roll of film clumsily onto a metal roller in the dark, emerged into the light, dumped some D-76 into my tank and started agitating...when i finally yanked that roll of film out of the tank and saw my first set of images i was hooked on photography. the following two years i took every black and white and color film class at my local college and shot every film and camera combo i could get my hands on. i loved film and photography more than a fat kid loves cake.

fast forward a few years and through a number of events we had stumbled our way into wedding photography and headed down what would eventually become our greatest adventure. upon starting the image is found in 2002, we made the decision to shoot all of our professional work digitally. our processing has changed over the years, but the look of the films we learned on were always the gold standard in our eyes. let's be honest though, nothing we processed digitally could even come close to the look and feel of the film images we got back from the lab. so we did the best we could with what we had and satisfied our appetite for film by shooting lots of our personal work on it.

fast forward to mid 2011and an opportunity came up that would change all of this. a band of amazing folks were putting together a startup called VISUAL SUPPLY CO with BIG ideas to create a revolutionary set of new tools for photographers. it was an incredible honor when they asked me to come on board and an exciting challenge to be a part of developing a new way of processing for photographers. countless hours of testing, developing, and testing some more VSCO FILM was born and i can honestly say that i have never been more excited about post processing our images. the colors, tones, contrast, grain, and everything else i love about shooting film has been perfectly emulated, developed, and matched so that i can process my digital images exactly the way we've always wanted. as if that wasn't enough, the time savings we're experiencing while delivering a superior product for our clients is a major bonus.

BEFORE VSCO FILM our workflow looked like this:

process RAW image for basic adjustments: white balance/exposure/brightness/etc...this process would normally take me an average of 8 hours per wedding. because of this massive time suck, we would regularly outsource this process, to the tune of a few hundred dollars per wedding. once the basic RAW processing was complete, that level of processing was what our clients would see in their online gallery, facebook, proofs, digital negatives, etc. then if our clients had ordered an album, prints, etc. those images would be brought into photoshop individually and retouched and have our blend of actions run on them to give them our "look."

WITH VSCO FILM our workflow looks like this:

we import all RAW images into lightroom 4 and in the "apply during import" dialogue i'll apply one of my go-to films that consistently deliver the look we love, in our case this is usually kodak portra 400++ or fuji 160C++. this speeds up our workflow in a number of ways: first, assuming our images are exposed well and the white balance is close (we shoot most wedding images in auto white balance) then that initial film setting usually gets the images 90% to where they need to be, and to be honest a majority of the images we deliver don't need much more than that initial setting. for the images that do need some more tweaking we'll make a quick run through in the quick develop panel making slight adjustments as needed. for any blocks of images that need the look of a different film (most commonly for blocks we'll switch to monochrome) we'll just apply that film setting to that group and continue on. once the processing on the set of images is finished, they are presented to the clients in this stage, with no further work needed on them to give them our "look" and the only additional work that would be done to any images for albums, prints, etc. would be minor retouching in photoshop or any dodge/burn finessing of the image. with this method of processing, we are ripping through 800-1000 image weddings in 2-3 hours tops, and delivering a much more finished, and polished look for our clients than we ever were before. HAPPY DANCE!

SOME THINGS WE LOVE ABOUT VSCO FILM:

- faster processing. as i mentioned above, my post time on an average wedding dropped from 8-10 hours to 2-3. yay for more time living not in front of the computer :)

- a consistent look to all our work. since we're using the same 3-5 films for all of our images, there is a visual continuity to our body of work.

- when processing, i'm thinking like a film shooter. having shot film since i started, i enjoy the lack of options when you're out shooting in terms of what look your images will have. "well, i have a roll of portra 400, a roll of tri-x, and a roll of tmax-3200 with me, which one works for this situation?" the lack of choice is wonderful! with VSCO FILM i force myself into that same lack of choice which, in my mind, makes processing more enjoyable and way more efficient. just like with film, with VSCO FILM you quickly learn your favorite films and learn which ones apply best in certain situations. i know that my stock of films i'll choose from in VSCO FILM is only 4 or 5 so any decisions i have to make while processing can be done on the fly and i know what results i'll be getting with each one.

- my goal in lightroom is to get in and out as quickly as possible while still delivering an amazing image for our clients, so while our processing is usually a "one and done" situation, for some truly special images, or the truly stubborn ones, there are a plethora of options in the supplied toolkit to fine tune and customize our results.

- subtle results that let our images do the talking, not the processing. after 10+ years as a professional photographer, i've come to realize that over the years, the images that have stuck with me and made an impact have never done so because of the processing on the image, it was the image. i love that with VSCO FILM the processing of the image, while it looks incredible, is subtle and does not distract from the heart of the image.

ONE THING WE HATE ABOUT VSCO FILM:

- the uncontrollable urge to go back and re-process everything i've shot digitally over the past 12 years.

to see some before and afters of images we've processed with VSCO FILM in adobe lightroom 4, ROLL YOUR MOUSE OVER THE IMAGES BELOW

THE PUFFER WEDDING / A PERSONAL PHOTO CHALLENGE

by NATE + JACLYN

every once in a while a wedding comes along that completely recharges your belief in weddings, love, and the beauty of people...jenna and jake's simple wedding in bakersfield, ca on a saturday in december did just that :)

* since i had the chance to come to this wedding to assist our amazing associate photographer chantastic, i took the opportunity to complete a photo challenge i'd tried once before...one lens. one focal length. one camera. all horizontal. all manual focus. all F11. all day.